Cologne "Tatort" about the Eroscenter scene Are prostitutes better off today than in the past?
A Cologne Eroscenter janitor is dead. The investigation into the "whorehouse" has begun: Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) interrogates Jasmin Backes (Antonia Bill), one of the prostitutes who has rented a room on the seventh floor of the building.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Cologne detectives Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt, right) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) investigate the red-light district in their new "Tatort: Siebte Etage". In a house where prostitutes are supposed to work on their own account, the facility manager of the syndicate has been pushed out of the window. Who could have done it?
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Chiara Passlak (Sabrina Setlur) also used to be a prostitute. Now she runs a nail salon in the Eroscenter, where the former colleagues often meet.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Malik Zeman (Mehdi Salim), an in-house technician at an erotic center, was thrown out of a seventh-floor window. Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt, left) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär, second from left) have forensic pathologist Dr. Roth (Joe Bausch) explain what is known so far.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Cosima (Senita Huskic) has two children and dreams of bringing them to live with her.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
The prostitute Jasmin Backes (Antonia Bill) has just found out that her mother has died. Her father had disowned Jasmin because of her profession.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Kai Jankow (Sascha Goepel) is a regular at the Eroscenter who always wants the same prostitute.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Jütte (Roland Riebeling) used to work for Sitte in Wuppertal. He still has an old acquaintance from that time: Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic).
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Toasting after work among colleagues: Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst, second from left) has invited her colleagues Cosima (Senita Huskic, left) and Jasmin (Antonia Bill) to her home. Tani's husband Andy (Andrei Viorel Tacu) looks on in the background.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Chiara Passlaks (Sabrina Setlur, right) gives Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst, left) new nails. Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic) also takes part in the conversation.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst) has a rather pragmatic approach to her job - and is privately married.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Gerald Kneissler (André Eisermann) is the manager of the Eroscenter. He is certain that pimps have no access to his "seventh floor", where tenant Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic) also works.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
A Cologne Eroscenter janitor is dead. The investigation into the "whorehouse" has begun: Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) interrogates Jasmin Backes (Antonia Bill), one of the prostitutes who has rented a room on the seventh floor of the building.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Cologne detectives Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt, right) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) investigate the red-light district in their new "Tatort: Siebte Etage". In a house where prostitutes are supposed to work on their own account, the facility manager of the syndicate has been pushed out of the window. Who could have done it?
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Chiara Passlak (Sabrina Setlur) also used to be a prostitute. Now she runs a nail salon in the Eroscenter, where the former colleagues often meet.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Malik Zeman (Mehdi Salim), an in-house technician at an erotic center, was thrown out of a seventh-floor window. Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt, left) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär, second from left) have forensic pathologist Dr. Roth (Joe Bausch) explain what is known so far.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Cosima (Senita Huskic) has two children and dreams of bringing them to live with her.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
The prostitute Jasmin Backes (Antonia Bill) has just found out that her mother has died. Her father had disowned Jasmin because of her profession.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Kai Jankow (Sascha Goepel) is a regular at the Eroscenter who always wants the same prostitute.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Jütte (Roland Riebeling) used to work for Sitte in Wuppertal. He still has an old acquaintance from that time: Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic).
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Toasting after work among colleagues: Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst, second from left) has invited her colleagues Cosima (Senita Huskic, left) and Jasmin (Antonia Bill) to her home. Tani's husband Andy (Andrei Viorel Tacu) looks on in the background.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Chiara Passlaks (Sabrina Setlur, right) gives Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst, left) new nails. Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic) also takes part in the conversation.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Tani Schiller (Maddy Forst) has a rather pragmatic approach to her job - and is privately married.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
Gerald Kneissler (André Eisermann) is the manager of the Eroscenter. He is certain that pimps have no access to his "seventh floor", where tenant Cosima Adam (Senita Huskic) also works.
Image: WDR/Martin Valentin Menk
In Cologne's "Tatort", Ballauf and Schenk met prostitutes who work on their own account. Are they better off than their colleagues with pimps? How does the business of physical love really work?
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- In Cologne's "Tatort: Siebte Etage", detectives Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Schenk (Dietmar Bär) investigate the case of a dead janitor in an erotic center.
- The prostitutes there worked on their own account and without a pimp.
- Despite the legalization of sex work, many women are still exploited in this system: "The majority of sex workers remain unheard."
The Cologne-based couple Eva and Volker A. Zahn ("Zarah - Wilde Jahre") are one of the best-established screenwriting teams in television.
Their material likes to deal with the moral aggregate states of Germany - and hardly any topic is more morally debatable than prostitution, the "oldest trade in the world".
Did it make sense to completely legalize it in Germany in 2017 and make it a completely normal profession? Are sex workers actually better off today without pimps?
Which actresses were hiding under the wigs and behind the glittery fumbling in the "Tatort: Siebte Etage" about murders in a Cologne sex center?
What was it about?
The unpopular janitor of an erotic center in Cologne was pushed out of the window and is dead. On the seventh floor of the erotic center, manager Gerald Kneissler (André Eisermann) is proud of the fact that all his ladies - tenants of their rooms - work on their own account and without pimps.
We get to know them during interrogations by detectives Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Schenk (Dietmar Bär): Jasmin (Antonia Bill) has been disowned by her middle-class family, Cosima (Senita Huskic) has two children and would like to take them in.
Tani (Maddy Forst) is married and takes a rather pragmatic view of the job. Ex-prostitute and lapdog lover Chiara (Sabrina Setlur) now runs a nail salon on the "Hurentrakt". Is one of the women the perpetrator?
What was it really about?
The German Prostitution Act came into force on July 1, 2017 and was intended to better protect sex workers by bringing them into the law. Prostitution has no longer been considered immoral since 2002.
The new law now provides for mandatory registration, health care and counseling for prostitutes. Brothel operators must provide evidence of proper working conditions and refrain from human trafficking and forced prostitution.
According to screenwriters Eva and Volker A. Zahn, the trade nevertheless remains an inhumane one, which they tried to show through the portraits of women in their new "Tatort": "We wanted to show the impossibility of leading a real life in the wrong one."
Zahn explains what destroys the sex workers' own psyche in the long term: "The knowledge of your own venality and availability, the habituation to the fact that every day several complete strangers penetrate you as a matter of course and in a less than friendly manner and, in the worst case, you have to pretend to them that you like it."
Prostitutes without pimps - a more humane concept?
Apart from the fact that a power imbalance between sex entrepreneurs and prostitutes can also be effective without an official pimp system, we would think that sex workers working for their own account would be better. Or is it?
According to various estimates, there are around 200,000 to 400,000 people in Germany who engage in commercial prostitution. The majority in Germany now work independently, especially since the legalization of prostitution in 2002 and the introduction of the Prostitute Protection Act in 2017. It is estimated that around 60-80% of sex workers work without a pimp.
In their research, the screenwriters found that many women are still exploited in this system. "The majority of sex workers remain unheard," says Volker A. Zahn. "And this in a business in which big money is made on the backs of prostitutes.
It's absolutely absurd: the structures created by men that enable or encourage the abuse of power and violence against women are finally being discussed at many levels of society. At the same time, men are allowed to let off steam almost uninhibitedly and undisturbed in these pay-sex free spaces as a matter of course and with political backing."
How many prostitutes work in Switzerland?
As in Germany, there is probably a high number of unreported cases in Switzerland. It is estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people work in prostitution in this country.
It is important to note that prostitution is legal in Switzerland as long as it is practiced under certain conditions. Here too, numerous laws have been passed in recent years to protect sex workers.
Was the film shot in a real brothel?
"Yes", confirms director Hüseyin Tabak. "In fact, all the scenes that are supposed to take place in a 'Laufhaus' were shot in a real 'Laufhaus'. That was two thirds of the shooting time for our 'Tatort'. And yes, the ladies were still working on the first three floors while we were filming on the top floor. There was only one small elevator, which the technical crew and the women in the team used to get up. Because you actually kept coming across clients in the stairwell."
Who played the prostitutes?
The best-known face in the ensemble belongs to the ex-prostitute and nail salon owner played by Sabrina Setlur. From 1995, the 50-year-old Frankfurt native sold two million albums as part of the Rödelheim-Hartreim rapper project led by producer Moses Pelham.
She became the first German female rapper to have a number one hit ("Du liebst mich nicht"). At the beginning of the noughties, things went quiet for the daughter of Indian immigrants. Setlur released two more albums in 2003 and 2007.
Jasmin Backes, the prostitute with the blonde pageboy wig, is played by Antonia Bill. The 36-year-old Munich native is a graduate of Germany's most famous acting school, Ernst Busch in Berlin, and has already appeared in numerous high-end theaters and series/films. Her very first major role was rewarded with the German Film Award. In 2013, Bill played the female lead in "Die andere Heimat - Chronik einer Sehnsucht" by director Edgar Reitz.
Maddy Forst, born in Haiti in 1997 and raised in Emmendingen near Freiburg, plays the black prostitute Tani Schiller. Forst now lives in Cologne and performs in the theater there. She also appeared in the ZDFneo series "WatchMe - Sex sells".
Finally, prostitute and mother-of-two Cosima is played by Senita Huskic. The German-Bosnian actress was born in Hamburg 30 years ago. She works regularly in the theater and also produces her own plays and short films. Since 2022, Huskic has been in front of the camera for various TV productions, including "Der Pass", a Rostock "Polizeiruf 110" and the series "Zwei Seiten des Abgrunds".
What's next for Cologne's "Tatort"?
Three new episodes have been shot. The 92nd case, "Restschuld", in which Ballauf and Schenk investigate the debt collection scene, is scheduled for January 5, 2025. Case 93, "Tatort - Colonius" - which will probably also be shown in the first quarter of 2025 - will then take the detectives to the 253-metre-high television tower in their city.
The two-storey visitor area is no longer open to the public. Since 1994, no tenant has been found for the revolving restaurant and the discotheque above. The viewing platform has been closed since 1999.
In September 2024, the last filming for "The Creation", the 94th case, finally came to an end. Filming took place at the Cologne Opera House. In the middle of rehearsals for the first premiere of the new season, the production's set designer is found shot dead there. And it doesn't stop there.
